Homeland Diaries: Confessions of America’s Veterans (MTS)

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HOUSTON -- This Veteran's Day, we are not only honoring the men and women who sacrifice their lives to protect ours, but recognizing the new battles our heroes face after returning home.

In a special and intimate documentary, Homeland Diaries, we take a deeper look into the issues of unemployment, homelessness, addiction and devastating war wounds.

Many, specifically women, are keeping a dark secret.

Military sexual trauma, or MST, is trauma caused by sexual assault or repeated, threatening sexual harassment experienced during military service.

"There was fairness, and then there was unfairness. Some unfair treatment and some military sexual assault," Roslyn Renee Battle said.

She was a sergeant in the United States Army when she was violated.

"We shared our tent with the men, even though we had to counter it off. We didn’t have our own tent," Battle explained.

Like so many others, she buried what happened to her aside just to get through the days.

"Well, it felt numb. It just felt like just going through the motions, just doing my job, hoping that it would hurry up and be over," she said.

She was not alone. Jenn Householder, another woman serving in the military, was also assaulted.

"I went through Air Force ROTC at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and I graduated in 1998 with a degree in math, and then got commissioned the very next day as a second lieutenant in the Air Force," Housholder said. "I was able to switch over from the active-duty Air Force to the Army guard reserves to fly. And I fly Blackhawks."

Housholder's pain was almost too much for her to bear.

"I got so desperate, so I wrote this suicide note. I knew where I would go, how I would execute my plan. This time I’m a major in the Army, so I knew I could come up with good reason to say why I need to get my weapon from the armory, pretty sure I could convince them, and I knew how I could execute my plan," Housholder said.

One in four female service members and one in 100 male service members experience MST. Due to the fear of getting booted out of the military, MST often goes unreported.

President Barack Obama says it has to end.

"It undermines what this military stands for when sexual assault takes place within our units," Obama said. "And that’s why we are going to work together, all of us. To stop these crimes of sexual assault and uphold the honor and the integrity that defines the finest military on Earth."

There will be more information on this, and more compelling confessions when Homeland Diaries: America's Veterans airs on CW39.